


Golden Son

by Nonsuch



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Complete, Cruelty, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Jupiter Ascending Fic Challenge, Parent/Child Incest, Violence, space capitalism is bad kiddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 03:18:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4988107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonsuch/pseuds/Nonsuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My first two children were utter failures. My eldest, my first boy, was fragile. My second child, my sole daughter, was a hollow thing. Only my third child, my darling boy, fulfilled his promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Son

My first two children were utter failures. My eldest, my first boy, was fragile. Balem broke under the pressure of his years; his eagerness to please me degraded into a form of fanaticism. His touch crept along my skin like a disease, his every glance greedy and engulfing. He disgusted me, and the prospect of his company become progressively more loathsome as the centuries clustered into millennia. I looked upon him and saw only decay and corruption, the most vile, petty evils of existence encased in his frail flesh. My second child, my sole daughter, was a hollow thing. She considered herself clever, with her artful manoeuvres and her games, her sunny smile only fading when I informed her that I was cutting her off. I left her to fend for herself, her swiftly won prosperity only serving to underline her duplicitous mastery of deceit. Only my third child, my darling boy, fulfilled his promise.

I crafted Titus for beauty, and he was born in the image of loveliness. His birth passed in a sweet abyss of opiates and spices, and I had to be supported to hold him. Another hand held my head so I could look down upon him and smile. I did not hear him cry even as I watched his mouth gape and his face redden, his tiny body tensing in my arms. I remember nothing else of his first day.

I spent every one of my darling’s birthdays in his company. I enjoyed his innocent pleasure, his crows of delight upon tearing open the wrapping paper surrounding his presents. There was nothing he could imagine, nothing he could ask for, that I could not give.

On the approach to his third birthday, he asked me for an elephant because I had been reading him an Earth story about the creatures. I arranged to have one delivered to my flagship, our permanent home for the first decades of Titus’s life. Many weeks were spent parading through the grand halls (for they were the only ones with doors wide enough to allow passage) on its back.

For his tenth birthday, he demanded a village filled with children of his own age. He wanted to be their king, he explained, so that he could learn what it was to rule. I agreed that this was a splendid idea, and dispatched servants to Earth so that they might source suitable children and bring them to my ship. The preparations took several months, a new wing being added to accommodate the community.  When it was finally unveiled, Titus sat on a golden throne that floated a considerable distance above the ground. He looked down upon his subjects, issuing edicts that were met with stupid stares and awed silence, and I watched as disdain congealed in his features. It was the first time I had seen my precious boy marked by an ugly emotion, and my heart felt heavier for it. As soon as he tired of the place for good, I had it liquidated.

By his fifteenth birthday, he had become truly beautiful, his features fine and chiselled, his sharply arched face balanced by his almond-shaped eyes. When I asked him what he wanted for his fifteenth birthday, he merely rested his head in my lap and looked up at me, quiet for a long moment before replying, “this, Mother. I want nothing more than this.” I felt a pang of affection, and despaired of the day I would lose his sweet, unfettered love.

I had grown more moderate with my RegeneX consumption in the centuries preceding Titus’s birth, but Titus filled me with a desire to live. His youth and beauty inspired renewed pleasure in my loveliness, a new appreciation of my desirability. Whereas I had once had my code set to restore me to the appearance of twenty-five, I now emerged from every bath with the appearance of sixteen years.

I marvelled at myself the first time I surveyed my dripping, naked body. I had forgotten what it was to appear so young, and a shiver of fear passed over me when I recognised how small I was. I had lost inches from my height, and my limbs seemed hopelessly thin and frail. My dresses would have to be taken in, my headpieces adjusted. I feared for the comments that would be made, for my standing, until I greeted Titus later the same day.

I dressed in white and approached him with quiet, careful steps. His back was to me, and he only turned when I called his name. He rose, approached me, his mouth set in a hard line. He seemed uncharacteristically severe, far older than his years, so much so that I repeated his name with a note of trepidation in my voice: “Titus?”

“So, it _is_ you,” he repeated, taking hold of my hands and squeezing them tightly, as is to prove his strength, “you look lovely, Mother. But you are so very small.”

“The recode restores my appearance to whichever age I choose. And I, to my everlasting frustration, was a small girl.”

“You could only ever be small in body.” His mouth broke into a smile, the warmth of it assuaging all my fears. We were young together, and in his company I could enjoy exquisite flashes of forgetfulness. When Titus caressed my hair or pressed a kiss upon my crown, I could imagine that I was enjoying absolution.

On his twentieth birthday, Titus asked me for a girl. I asked for more detail – colour, build, shape. He specified a girl with olive skin, a slight build, and small breasts. He smiled lazily as he described her, his eyes playing over my body. I had my agents source him such a girl, allowed him to keep her for a single day, and promptly murdered her by my own hand. It was satisfying to watch the blood gush from her throat in red waves, but it was more satisfying still to know that she was never asked for again.

On his twenty-fifth birthday, Titus asked for nothing. My flagship had been cruising through the furthest reaches of space, in pursuit of the enduring emptiness it offered, since my pregnancy. He appeared to be my elder now, and had long since ceased to call me Mother. Indeed, we said little – we were each content with the simple balm of the other’s company.

I was lounging by a window, stroking Titus’s hair as he rested his head in my lap, when the ping came through. Balem’s cruiser had entered our flight path. I made my excuses and left, moving swiftly to the command deck as I issued orders over my comlink. I commanded that a portal be generated, that we lose him, but the ship’s engines only stuttered and groaned in response to the command. No one – none of the many engineers, captains or attendants in my employ – could explain it or present a solution. Our ship was paralysed, its mechanisms useless. In despair, I fled to find Titus, to protect him. As it turned out, he had been waiting for me.

“No one will tell me what is happening. Who is this enemy? Why are the servitants refusing to tell me what is happening?”

I knew myself to be a poor liar, so made no effort to comfort him with falsehood. “Your brother is here.”

He blinked slowly, processing this. “And my brother means us harm?” His response was carefully measured, his words untouched by the panic afflicting mine. I had never even told Titus he had a brother, so was somewhat taken aback by his lack of surprise.

“He will mean you harm, if he finds you. You must hide – he will be coming here.”

He hushed me, extending his free hand to enclose the back of my skull and draw me closer. I swallowed hard, looking behind my shoulder as if Balem might emerge. “Look at me,” I did, finding his face steady and strong, “you have protected me and indulged for my whole life. Now you will allow me to protect you.” He bent his head to kiss the parting of my hair, and in that moment I felt safe again. I had no memory of my mother – a nameless concubine of my father’s – but fancied that she would have kissed me with equal softness had she ever been allowed to hold me.

We went to the command deck together, and I felt unsteady, holding Titus’s arm for support, as I watched a jumper leave the cruiser. I hadn’t seen Balem for over twenty years, but it might as well have been a thousand for how threadbare and dim my last memory of him was. “He begged me to destroy you,” I explained, squeezing Titus’s hand, “he threatened me and pleaded and wept, but I refused. I fled to the furthest reaches of space to keep you safe.”

Titus bowed his head, and I felt a warm, soft kiss upon my cheek. “I am honoured by your faith in me.”

Titus suggested that we remove ourselves to the audience chamber, keeping a complement of guards close at hand. I agreed, but upon my seating myself I was unsettled to find that my toes merely brushed against the cold, marble dais that held my throne. The cold sensation of the stone shot through me nonetheless, reminding me of how long it had been since I had last played at being a queen. Only now did I realise how foolish I had been to engage with the spectacle of power in a world where power was painfully dull, a blunt force embodied by the mean, clinical lines of figures and balance sheets.  

When the doors swept open and I saw Balem again, I hardly felt Titus’s hand upon my shoulder. I could only look at his brother, the knot of fear in my stomach loosening, slowly poisoning me with its insinuations of guilt and culpability. He was smiling, his face radiant with joy, his steps quick. His eagerness to reach me was revolting, but I found myself too numb to withdraw my hands before he could descend to his knees and take them in his.

“Mother,” he murmured, his gaze reverent, “how young you look.”

I looked away, silent. I could feel the bones beneath his skin as he caressed my hands, gently turning them over in his. He had long since starved himself, subsisting almost exclusively on the residue of the dead. To touch him was to know my own mortality, to feel the steady creep of desolation.

“What do you want?” Balem and I both turned our heads to look at Titus, who had spoken up from my side. “Why are you here?”

Balem straightened, and I sagged forward in my seat the moment he released my hands. Balem moved to stand before Titus, surveying him with a sneer. “So, this is what you produced.” He turned back to look at me, distaste darkening his expression. “How does he compare, Mother? Has he satisfied you at last? If you can tell me that this boy has truly made you happy, I will leave you to this limbo.”

I released a bark of a laugh. “Would you claim to desire my happiness, Balem? Would you truly claim to care for my pleasure?”

“I would. Prove to me that you are happy, not merely running from me without goal or purpose, and I will leave you. All of your ship’s functionality will be restored. I merely ask that you prove it.” He bent until his lips were level with my ear, his next words spoken in an intimate whisper. “If you are still unhappy here, you had might as well be unhappy by my side.” He withdrew and stepped back, looking at me. I shivered. Whatever promises he could make, I knew he would never have his fill of me.

Titus squeezed my shoulder, and I turned my head from Balem to look at him. To look at Titus was to forget all of my suffering, all of my deeds. Titus smiled down at me, pure love and affection shining through his lovely face. I rose and wound my arms around his neck, pressing my face against his shoulder to block out all else. He set his arms around me, but I was unprepared when he lifted me into his arms. The rushing sensation left me giddy, and I could only smile and stare, wide eyed, as he bent his head to press his lips against mine. His mouth was warm and alive, the vividness of the sensation of his tongue enough to suspend all other awareness.

“Titus,” I said when he drew back, shocked by the extent of my own delight. My whole body was trembling, but he only responded by holding me more securely.  

“Look around you.” I did, and I realised that Balem was gone, vanished like a bad dream.

That night, the ship safely removed to another quadrant, the engineers executed for their singular failure, we returned to the state that we had begun the day in. I relaxed in my favourite chaise, Titus’s head in my lap. His eyes were closed, his small smile the sole evidence of his contentment. My fingers cut through his soft, brown hair, fingering each individual strand. I paused with a frown, and Titus was quick to notice.

I said nothing when he questioned it, but left the seat and gestured for him to follow me. I led him through a tangle of passages and a series of ornate and intricately decorated doors, and he knew better than to question me. When I finally stopped, we were in the one room in the ship he had never previously been permitted to enter. He beheld the calm, shimmering pool from the doorway, and I had to take his hand and lead him to the mirrored wall I used to keep an adequate measure of my appearance. I reached for the diamond clasp at the front of my dress, unclipping it and allowing it to pool in a shimmering mass at my feet. I turned to Titus, and watched him swallow, revelling in his shameless delight. I allowed his gaze for a few beats before speaking. “I did not bring you to a mirror to look at me. Look at yourself. Find what I found.”

He slowly turned to regard himself, and I moved to stand beside him, resting my head against his shoulder. I watched as he saw it, reaching for the single white hair, conspicuous in the clinical, unforgiving light emanating from the ceiling. He made as if to pull it.

“Stop,” I ordered, and he paused, allowing his hand to fall away, “every piece of you is precious – to be restored, not destroyed.”

I took his hand and led him to the pool, pausing just before the steps. I tugged at his sleeves, pushing the jacket from his shoulders. I smiled wickedly, enjoying that it was finally his turn to be surprised.

“Is this my birthday present?”

“No, Titus,” I said, taking a step back into the nectar, pulling him forward, “this is the beginning of your eternity.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, yep. Lovely episodes from Titus's early years. I've not seen much exploration of the relationship between Titus and Seraphi (whenever they are in a story together, Titus is pretty much always an embryo), so was curious to ruminate on it here.
> 
> Comments are most welcome - I love to read your thoughts!


End file.
